The main goal of this blog is to think about the darkest time of our history until now: the Holocaust, the Nazi cruelty against the Humanity. //
El principal objetivo de este blog es hacer reflexionar sobre la época más oscura de nuestra historia hasta ahora: el Holocausto, la barbarie Nazi, enemiga de la Humanidad.

viernes, 25 de agosto de 2017

The main gate entering the German Nazi death campin Auschwitz in the then occupied Poland.

On August 8, 2017, together with Philos Project, Ewelina U. Ochab -a Forbes Contributor- went to the Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (KL Auschwitz) outside of Krakow. KL Auschwitz was the German Nazi camp in the then occupied Poland. I avoided going to Auschwitz for many years. However, visiting the camp was unavoidable because of the work that I do.KL Auschwitz was the biggest Nazi camp. The camp was founded in early 1940 in response to the growing number of arrests and the overcrowding of prisons and other institutions across Europe. The first prisoners were Poles. However, since 1942, KL Auschwitz was turned from a concentration camp into a death camp (extermination camp) for the purposes of ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ (the final solution to the Jewish question). Over the years of its existence, the camp significantly expanded to become a complex consisting of three parts: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Auschwitz III-Monowitz. Ultimately, over 1.1 million people lost their lives in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex before Soviet troops liberated the few survivors on January 27, 1945.

Life in the camp: Inside each barrack, there were 60 brick partitions with three tiers, a total of 180 sleeping places 'buks'. Each 'buks' waw designed to accommodate four prisoners. (Photo credit: Ewelina Ochab)

While I have avoided going to the camp for many years, the study of the WWII, the atrocities in the camps (including the illegal human experimentation without consent) and the Nuremberg Trials was a crucial part of my legal education. However, the study of WWII is starting to lose its importance. People know less and less about what happened during WWII, what happened in KL Auschwitz and other camps.

Despite my own reluctance to go to the camp, visiting KL Auschwitz is important. It is important as an educational trip to have a better understanding of the historical events. However, there are more lessons that can be learned.

No.1.: Forced Labor and Slavery

The sign at the entry gate to the camp says ‘Arbeit macht frei’ (work makes free). Ironic. The forced labor in the camp did not make anyone free. To the contrary, it was an extreme form of slavery and forced labor. Only death made the prisoners free.

Slavery and forced labor continue until this day. It was not abolished with the liberation of the camp on January 27, 1945. It existed before KL Auschwitz and continue to exist even now. One modern example would be the girls and women abducted and trafficked by terrorist groups and forced into labor or sex slavery - the practice used by Daesh against Yazidi and Christian girls and women, and by Boko Haram against girls and women in Nigeria and neighboring countries. However, to find examples of human trafficking for labor and sexual slavery, one does not have to exclusively rely upon examples of such crimes being committed in a far away country. Indeed, modern day slavery (and the often associated human trafficking) are crimes committed under our nose.

The victims are less visible. They are not in camps. They do not wear striped pajamas. They do not wear chains - at least not visible chains. But the chains are there. These chains may be fear for their lives or lives of their loved ones, fear of humiliation, fear of repercussions (criminal charges, especially in cases of forced prostitution) and many more.

As during the Nazi reign, work did not make them free, similarly, modern forms of slavery and forced labor are endless and freedom becomes an empty word. When the victims come to a GP or hospital (if they are ever able), we miss the signs that should trigger the red flags.

The phrase ‘Lebensunwertes Leben’ was a phrase used by the Nazis to describe life unworthy of living. Jews were designated by Nazis as such. Similarly, and long before WWII, physically and mentally disabled people received such classification. Lives classified as unworthy of living were dehumanized not only with the general classification. The groups or individuals, especially Jews, were compared to animals to deprive them of their humanity. As a result of the ‘life unworthy of living’ designation, Jews were ill-fated for extermination, physically and mentally disabled people were ill-fated for euthanasia (also extermination but under a different name). Despite the fact that over the years any such narrative was being strongly combated by international and domestic institutions, the narrative degrading life or dehumanizing individuals is still preserved.

Over the years post WWII, the narrative has been re-introduced occasionally. In accordance with this dehumanizing narrative, Christians minorities in Syria and Iraq are called ‘cross-worshipers’ and ‘infidels’ by Daesh. Similarly, Daesh calls Yazidis the ‘devil-worshipers.’ They are then targeted by Daesh for destruction, in whole or in part. In America in August 2017, white supremacists and KKK supporters marched through Charlottesville wearing swastikas and chanting 'Jew will not replace us'. In Belgium and the Netherlands, adults (including elderly suffering from dementia) and children suffering from incurable illnesses can be euthanized on request. The examples of more or less visible cases of human lives being dehumanized are out there. We are just afraid to see the signs as seeing would place a moral obligation to act.

Visiting Auschwitz is important to remind ourselves about the dark history that hunted Europe in the first part of the 20th century. Remembering the victims and the atrocities that led to the death of millions of people is an important element of prevention. However, commemorating the victims is not enough. We must not forget the lessons of the past and we should learn to read current events through the prism of these lessons.

Instead of soliloquizing what we would have done if we were living in the Nazi Germany or the occupied territories, we can make a change now. We need to remember the history and to be vigilant in recognizing the attitudes and behaviors that have led to annihilation, of millions of people during Nazi reign. The signs are there. It is up to us to see them. It is up to us to act. And act we must.

jueves, 24 de agosto de 2017

John Potter (pictured) was smuggled into France by submarine in 1942, taking on the identity of a dead Frenchman

As a teenager, John Potter was smuggled into France via a submarine in 1942

He took on identity of a dead Frenchman to set up resistance groups in Europe

Mr. Potter was regularly flown back to Britain to meet with Sir Winston Churchill

He kept his spy career hidden from his family for 50 years before telling his wife

The heroics of a Second World War spy who went undercover in Nazi-controlled Europe have finally emerged following his death at the age of 93.

As a teenager, John Potter was smuggled into France by submarine in 1942, taking on the identity of a dead Frenchman to set up resistance groups.

Mr. Potter, who kept his spy career secret from his family for 50 years, was regularly flown back to Britain to meet with Winston Churchill.

The Prime Minister would then give him a glass of brandy before sending him back to Saint-Flour in France, where his mission was to protect several villages.

Following the war, he witnessed the horrific scenes of the Dachau concentration camp, near Munich in Germany.

He also assisted during the Nuremberg Trials, becoming a confidant for chemists responsible for the production of lethal gas.

His wife, Mildred, said her husband had to keep horrifying experiences secret for 50 years before he was finally able to tell her about it.

Mrs Potter, 79, of Worthing, West Sussex, said: 'I met John in Vienna, Austria, in 1973 and we got married three years later.

'I said to him one day that, because of his age, he must have been involved in the war in some way.

John Potter and his wife, Mildred, in Paris during 1972. The spy was regularly flown back to Britain during the war to meet with Winston Churchill

'He told me he was and that he was part of the army, but that he couldn't tell me any more than that at the moment because he had signed the Official Secrets Act.

'He said to me that one day he would be able to tell me all about his experiences.

'I forgot about it over time, but then we were on holiday in Spain when he said to me one day that the 50 years was now up.

'Initially, I wasn't sure what he meant, but then I realised he meant he was able to talk about what he had done in the war.

'He told me he had been unable to join up with the army properly because he had a club foot when he was younger.

'John had been privately educated and wanted to defer any military service so he could continue studying maths and chemistry at London University.

'He was asked to attend a meeting one day, during which he told about his desire to defer but when he got there he was asked to sign part of the Official Secrets Act.

'He was then asked if he would go to France and replace a teenager who had been killed and report back to Britain on what was happening.

'He was just 18 when he was asked to do this and couldn't tell anyone about it, not even his family.'

Mr. Potter was dispatched to France on a submarine, before being smuggled to Saint-Flour by the French Resistance, where he assumed his place in his new family.

When Churchill decided the reports he was receiving from France were not good enough, he brought Mr. Potter into a select group of informants, whom he would meet with personally.

Mrs. Potter said: 'John said Mr. Churchill was a real presence - he could really get things done.

'John needed ammunition dropped into his village, not just for them but for others nearby as well, and no one was sorting it. When he told Winston about it, he was able to sort it within days.

+7

When the war ended, Mr Potter returned to Britain where he completed his studies at London University and spent the rest of his life working in chemistry

'Every time he went to see him, Winston always gave him a brandy before he went off again and wished him luck.

'The last time he visited Winston it was before D-Day and he said: 'You have done so well for all this time.'

During his time in France, Mrs. Potter said her husband was able to ensure he never lost a man until one of his force was shot by an American at the end of the war in 1945.

After Mr. Potter demanded the US soldier face a court martial, General Omar Bradley of the US Army instead asked John to join them and assist them liberating towns and camps in France and Germany so that no further mishaps occurred.

Mrs Potter said: 'He joined the Americans as they swept through France and Germany to help them identify SS soldiers - the Americans couldn't tell the uniforms apart.

'The SS soldiers were obviously trying to hide and John knew how to tell them apart from others.

'He was there when they liberated Dachau concentration camp and he said the smell and sights were just horrific.

'In his later years, he suffered from dementia and one day I came home and he was just sat in tears.

'I asked him what was wrong and he just said 'it is terrible, it is awful', he was remembering seeing those terrible scenes.

miércoles, 31 de mayo de 2017

Rena Farber, who was a child in Krakow, Poland, when the Nazis took over, speaks at Harmony Hall in Dracut. She was one of the Jews saved from the Holocaust by Oskar Schindler. SUN/JULIA MALAKIE

DRACUT--Rena Farber's voice is frail now as she nears the age of 90. Her message, however, is so gripping that she captivated an audience of middle schoolers and their parents as she recalled how she survived Nazi death camps.

"Time is running out for the survivors and the liberators," she said. "We are the eyewitnesses. We witnessed things you couldn't really imagine."

The inevitability that her generation will soon be gone motivates Farber to pass her memories on. "The Holocaust cannot be forgotten. It is time to pass the torch of memory to younger people -- to grandchildren and great grandchildren so that they become eyewitnesses."

The normal shuffling of preteens quickly subsided and the room became quiet as she told her story. She pulled adults and children alike into the hell of the Holocaust.

Rena Farber was 10 when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. As her family was forced into a ghetto, her father tried to reassure her not to worry. "The world will hear about us. They will come and save us." But the world did not intervene to save the Jews of Europe.

The Nazis took her father away and she never saw him again. As she and her mother were leaving their apartment in Krakow, she tried knocking on neighbors' doors. "But no one had the courage to say goodbye."

Of those neighbors, she said, "They were ordinary people, like the people you come across every day.

How could you imagine they would believe that screeching hate? How could you believe they would listen and follow (Hitler)?

Farber survived the death camps "because I was on Schindler's List." Her mother also was on Oskar Schindler's list. Retelling her story of survival is Farber's way of thanking the man who saved them and 1200 other Jews from certain death in Nazi gas chambers.

The story of Schindler's List was famously documented in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film by the same title. Schindler, who joined German Intelligence in the 1930s, used his connections and bribery to protect the Jewish workers in his enamelware and munitions factory. He spent his entire fortune on this effort, but at the end of his life said, "I should have done more."

Farber's journey to Schindler's factory involved a transfer to Auschwitz from another camp. "We were leaving hell and going to Oskar Schindler," she said. She did not know, however, that Auschwitz would be the first stop.

Auschwitz "was unthinkable then. It is unthinkable now. It was built for the pure purpose of murdering people."

One experience at Auschwitz left her "so traumatized and dehumanized that I thought we were dead. I really didn't think we were alive."

Farber targets her message to young people, such as those in Rebecca Duda's class at the Richardson Middle School. Her presentation this week marked the fifth year she has told her story to a Dracut audience.

"Unfortunately, my message is very timely. People have to be upstanders not bystanders. We need to fight against hate," she said.

Children have a lot of power in shaping that fight, and she wants them to know that. "They are very powerful. They have the power to change the world by speaking up." They can begin by standing up to bullies. "Bullies are cowards. If you see bullying, go and get help. Tell a teacher or a parent."

"The world is in a lot of trouble now. It is very difficult to watch what is happening." The world's problems make it critical for young people to understand the power they have to change things.

Standing up to bullies takes courage, Finder said, which is just what the world needs. "Schindler is a shining example that one person can make a difference," she said.

lunes, 22 de mayo de 2017

Jack Adler of Denver has two birthdays. The first is when he was born and the second, he says, is the day United States troops liberated him and thousands of other Jewish people during what's known as the Dachau Death March on May 1, 1945.

Adler grew up in Pabianice, Poland. The Nazis came to his hometown when he was about 10. While he has vivid memories about the Nazi tanks and vehicles rolling into town, Adler says he could not, at that age, comprehend what was about to befall on his family.

"My parents had a better inclination of what could happen," Adler says. "However, they wouldn't share it with the kids so as not to instill fear. I can understand that now being a parent and a grandparent."

In 1940, Adler and his family were forced into a ghetto in Pabianice. They lived in tight quarters and were fed very little food.

"It was difficult to comprehend, as a young child, why [being] Jewish put me in such a situation as the ghetto," Adler says about being singled out for his faith.

After two years in the Pabianice ghetto, where his brother and mother died, the remaining members of Adler's family went to the Lodz Ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland. When Nazi forces liquidated it in 1944, Adler, along with his father and his two sisters, boarded a train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. That would be the last time he saw his sisters.

From Auschwitz, Adler was sent to Kaufering in Bavaria, a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp, before ending up at Dachau itself. He was the sole member of his immediate family to survive the Holocaust and came to the United States as a war orphan in 1946.

He first returned to Poland in 2011, when we were invited by the International March of the Living, an annual event that invites people from all around the globe to learn about the Holocaust. Adler devotes much of his time to educating others about the Holocaust, including speaking at schools and military bases and is a speaker for the Mizel Museum's "Eyewitness to History" educational programming. His experiences are also documented in his 2012 memoir titled "Y: A Holocaust Narrative" and the 2015 documentary "Surviving Skokie," which was produced by his son, Eli Adler.

Adler says his relationship with Judaism has become more cultural than religious.

"I'm very proud of my Jewish heritage," Adler says. "However, I'm not what you would consider very religious. What I believe is that God created man and man created evil. We are responsible for how we treat or mistreat each other."

Adler, who is 88, spoke with Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner. Highlights from the conversation are below.

On being greeted by Jewish prisoners when he arrived at Auschwitz:

"Their job was primarily to take away whatever meager belongings one brought along with them. They whispered to us, 'When you march -- meaning for the selection process -- look strong if you want to live. You just arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination and selection camp.' That's how we found out where we had arrived."

On how he kept going despite "hopeless situations":

"The barbed wire [fences] surrounding Auschwitz-Birkenau had electricity. So when people found out what happened to their loved ones who went to the left and were killed in the gas chambers they [killed themselves]. You would find bodies hanging from those barbed wires daily. Of people who gave up hope, very few survived. Even though you found yourself in a hopeless and helpless situation, one thing the Nazis couldn't take away from you was what was in your mind. What kept me going, even after I was separated from my father and was sent to the Dachau camp, I said to myself, 'You have to go on and be strong if you want to see your loved ones again.' You had to have something positive in your mind to keep you going. Of course, I didn't know at the time they all perished in the Holocaust."

On the march from Dachau concentration camp:

"We marched during daylight hours and at night we would sleep in the woods. But they would take prisoners to the other side of the woods. [The prisoners] were given shovels to dig a big ditch. When the ditch was completed, they were ordered to line up around the perimeter of the ditch and they were shot to death."

What he remembers about the day he was liberated:

"I heard the older people speaking loudly. The Nazis prohibited communication. So I crawled over to say, 'What's going on?' They said, 'They're gone ... The SS, the killers, are gone.' And within a few minutes, tanks and trucks arrived and when they saw us and stopped -- we didn't know who they were. I had never seen an American military vehicle. One of the officers got on the hood of a jeep with a bullhorn. He said, 'This is the United States Army. You are all free.' I wouldn't have made it one more day ... When I was checked into [a hospital], I was told I weighed 65 pounds."

When a CPR News staffer greeted Adler in the lobby with "Hi Jack," Adler responded, "Don't say 'hi-jack' at the airport." Adler says humor has been his greatest coping mechanism:

"Every [SS] guard has a name ... We had ugly names for them as they marched us to and from work on a daily basis and watched us doing work. I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but I think humor helps every day. If you want to call it a medicine, call it as such, because it's very important, for every human being, to have a little sense of humor. It helps to overcome daily obstacles."

Jacques Fein, who eluded transport to a Nazi concentration camp after he and his younger sister were hidden by a sympathetic French family during World War II, died of complications from a stroke May 11 at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Columbia.

The former longtime Columbia resident who was living in Elkridge was 78.

The son of Szmul Karpik, a tailor, and Rojza Karpik, a homemaker, Jacques Fein was born in Paris, where his parents, Polish Jews, had immigrated in the 1930s in hopes of avoiding Nazi persecution.

"After the German invasion and surrender of France in 1940, the Karpiks' lives changed drastically," according to a profile of Mr. Fein on the website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Terrified of what might happen to their two children, they turned to the Oeuvres de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) — or the Society for the Rescue of Children.

In 1941, at age 3, he and his 18-month-old sister were placed with Marcel and Suzanne Bocahut, a Catholic family living at Vers-Galant, about 20 miles north of Paris.

"Shortly after Jacques and Annette went into hiding, the government began to deport Jews to transit camps and later to concentration camps. Jacques later learned that his father had been deported to Pithiviers [a French transit camp], then to Auschwitz, where he was murdered in 1942," according to the Holocaust Museum.

For the first year, their mother visited them in secret until she was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Drancy, an internment camp in the Paris suburbs. Eventually, she was sent to Auschwitz, where she perished along with several other family members.

The Bocahut family, who had four children of their own, took in several other Jewish children in addition to the Karpiks. According to the Holocaust Museum account, "Jacques was baptized to avert suspicion that he might be Jewish."

At the end of World War II, the Karpik children were once again placed with the Oeuvres de Secours aux Enfants at Les Roches, and later at Taverny outside of Paris, where the postwar mission was to reunite displaced children with their families.

"He remembered this as a happy time, free from the threat of Nazi soldiers," wrote his daughter, Rachel Burrows of Ellicott City, in a biographical sketch of her father.

According to the Holocaust Museum, the children remained hopeful they would see their parents again — but they never came back. In 1947, the children were visited by Harry and Rose Fein of New Jersey, who had connections to the Oeuvres de Secours aux Enfants.

The couple, who could not have children, adopted the brother and sister in 1948.

"Jacques arrived at Ellis Island when he was 10, not knowing any English, but quickly acclimated to his new home, family, and country," Ms. Burrows wrote.

They settled in Union, N.J., where they were "raised as regular American kids," Ms. Burrows wrote.

Mr. Fein often spoke of having had multiple families, his daughter said: his birth parents, the Bocahut family, the Oeuvres de Secours aux Enfants and finally the Fein family.

Mr. Fein was a graduate of Clark University in Worcester, Mass., and took graduate studies in computer science at the Johns Hopkins University.

He joined Computer Science Corp. in the early 1970s and worked on projects including those related to the space program. He retired in 2014.

His daughter said that because of the experiences of his childhood, he dedicated his life to "repay the kindness of all the people who saved him and his sister during and after the war."

He was the past president of the Jewish Federation of Howard County and was founder of the World Federation of Jewish Holocaust Child Survivors and a founder of Washington/Baltimore Survivors of the Holocaust — Last Generation.

Mr. Fein was also was co-president and treasurer of OSE-USA and a weekly volunteer at the Holocaust Museum; he gave presentations on the Holocaust to students and other groups. He also was a participant in the Shoah Project, established by filmmaker Steven Spielberg to chronicle and preserve the experiences of those who survived the Holocaust.

Mr. Fein was named Howard County Volunteer of the Year in 2011.

Funeral services were held May 14 at Oakland Mills Interfaith Center in Columbia.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife of 31 years, the former Judee Iliff; a son, Matthew Fein of Columbia; a stepdaughter, Laura Alima of Hampden; his sister, Annette Fein of Israel; and five grandchildren. An earlier marriage ended in divorce.

lunes, 1 de mayo de 2017

Throughout her lifetime, Gila Kriegel had looked upon a short letter – really a postcard – that her father had written as his lone written words during those horrendous years of the Holocaust. Yechiel Wiener wrote the few sentences to his brother in then-Palestine after he was liberated from Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, which he survived after enduring a death march from a satellite labor camp of the Flossenberg concentration camp in Germany in the closing phase of World War II.

The 180-word letter, dated July 11, 1945, spoke of his desire to reunite with his brother, but also his conclusion not to go back to his native Poland because no one would be left for him. It also talks of his hope for building a new life, and desire to go on.

A few sentiments, but that was all from the dizzying period immediately after the war.

Or so Kriegel thought.

A few short years ago, his cousins suddenly discovered a trove of letters from Kriegel’s father, written again to his brother. She and some volunteers have gone about translating the letters from poetic Biblical Hebrew into English. And the sentiments he expressed as a recent Holocaust survivor have been illuminating.

“One of the things that our translating group has found to be quite striking in these letters is the combination of sadness and hope, of a loss of faith and yet a faith in the future,” said Kriegel of Sharon, the featured speaker at the regional Yom HaShoah V’HaG’vurah (The Day of Remembering the Holocaust and the Bravery) ceremonies, held this year at Ahavath Torah, Stoughton April 23. “We have found ourselves amazed by my father’s incredible resilience in spite of and perhaps because of what he had endured.”

Both her late father and her mother, Sarah Wiener, survived the Holocaust. Her mother’s family survived because a family of Righteous Gentiles hid them in an underground bunker for 2 ½ years. Her mother still shares her own story and spoke to a day school in New Jersey earlier this week.

Her father was in the middle of his medical studies at the Jagellonian University when the war changed his life.

As an example, Kriegel read one of the more recently discovered letters dated Purim 1946 from her father, who survived several labor and concentration camps. He related how the holiday helped him survive the Shoah:

“That ancient story that is not forgotten and that encouraged me. It didn’t fail to encourage me even in those moments when the sharp sword was on my neck and the sharp hatchet blade was over my head. My cheek was being slapped and my body was being cut. (and this is not something I would recommend ) but I just remembered the fate of Haman and how his end was to fall. And those things happened. ”

He later writes of the happy memories of growing up, and then the change as the Nazis took over. He recalls of an uncle sentenced to death for baking Matzahs. And he talks about his own aspirations and inner conflicts:

“And I, what will be my end? Have I eliminated my path? Why have I started now to study? Is it possible that I made a mistake? No and No. I will always find the correct path. In spite of the religious education that I got, to my sorrow my faith in the survival of the soul is gone. (I am so completely lacking in that faith). My parents are no longer living. But they are living within us. Like then as now, I hear their voices. And they are for me guides in the solitary, destitute path that I have set out.”

Wiener, perhaps guided by his parents like he wrote, did continue on the path on which he originally intended and became a physician – as did his daughter years later.

“I believe there is much we can all learn from those who were able to pick themselves up after their lives were shattered and build a new life in a new country,” Kriegel said. “Of course there were those who were not able to do this but so many did. Both of my parents and so many of the survivors that I have met are incredible role models of grit and resilience to their families, friends and communities.”

The theme for the ceremony this year’s Yom HaShoah v’HaG’vurah program, which filled the synagogue with more than 400 people, was Righteous Gentiles. Seven students read about the courage and sacrifice of non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Prayers, songs and inspirational readings were performed by several rabbis and cantors, candles were lit by anyone who wanted to remember those lost, and the Temple Israel of Sharon-based singing group Shir Rhythm sang.

The observance was sponsored by Temple Beth Emunah in Brockton; Temple Beth Abraham and Temple Beth David of the South Shore of Canton; Temple Chayai Shalom of Easton; Temple Ahavath Torah of Stoughton; and Adath Sharon Sisterhood, Temple Israel and Temple Sinai of Sharon.

Yom HaShoah is observed as Israel’s day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews and five million others who perished in the Holocaust as a result of the actions carried out by Nazi Germany and its accessories, and for the Jewish resistance in that period.